It might seem obvious, but taking some time to identify your bottleneck(s), either in your personal work or in your company, is key. Are lead times bogged down by manufacturing? If product output is efficient, is research and development stalled?
It is BEC week! Each year, there are two events for me that are above all others. The Building Envelope Contractors Conference in the spring, and GlassBuild America in the Fall. I live for these events because of the ability to grow business, and myself.
Do you feel technology is advancing too fast for you to keep up? Do you focus too much on how changing machines, software, and/or processes will disrupt your facility, and less on the future benefits of these changes? As technology continues to evolve and improve, these advancements promise to improve everything—cost, quality, flexibility, delivery, process, speed and design. But this fact still leaves window and door fabricators without answers.
Gone are the days when shop-glazed projects were only for large-scale buildings in big cities. Contractors are becoming more adept in prefabrication techniques, particularly for healthcare facilities, hospitality and multifamily projects, college buildings and dormitories, and residential.
It is time to talk about the Coronavirus and what could be next for all of us. This obviously is very frightening situation on many levels and one that many of us in North America have not felt yet but probably will…soon.
In 2019, Christopher Glass & Aluminum Inc., a contract glazing company based near Chicago, partnered with the City of Elmhurst Fire Department and Elmhurst Hospital to provide CPR training for 60 of the company’s employees. The training staff offered a Hands-Only CPR and Stop the Bleed: Bleeding Control for the Injured training over the course of three sessions, held at the company’s corporate headquarters in Elmhurst, Illinois.
I’ve played window historian on this blog in the past, tracking specifically the way that vinyl has ascended over the decades from a mistrusted bargain material to the undisputed market leader. Why the shift? There have been material improvements, of course. Standards and certifications helped, too. But above all, the general public came to trust vinyl. And consumers have since reaped the benefits that high-performance vinyl framing can provide.
Several months ago, the documentary “American Factory” was released. I immediately watched this documentary and when it was over, I said to myself, there is no way I will ever blog about this.
With hurricanes predicted to worsen in the coming years, according to a study by Yale University, the resiliency conversation is more important to the building products industry than ever. Certainly, smart building practices and materials are paramount to the conversation, but even the strongest of buildings can fail under enough force. After the storm rolls out, it leaves in its wake a trail of damage, from which homeowners and communities must rebuild.